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Alessandro Oneto

Publications and source records attributed to Alessandro Oneto.

At least 19 recordsLinked to original sources
arXiv2026

On Waring rank jumps via critical rank-one approximations

We investigate whether eigenvectors, also known as critical rank-one approximations, of a symmetric tensor can be used to increase or decrease its Waring rank. First, we study the variety of degree-d rank-r forms which admit an eigenvector as part of a minimal Waring decomposition. In the case of binary forms, we show that this is of codimension-one in the r-th secant variety of the rational normal curve. On the other hand, we prove that for any binary form of rank less than (d+1)/2 (subgeneric), any eigenvector increases the rank. Additionally, when the degree is odd, the same holds for generic forms of generic rank. Our approach employs the strict relation between the apolar action and the Bombieri-Weyl product.

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arXiv2026

Finiteness of Hadamard ranks

The Hadamard rank of a point with respect to a projective variety is, if it exists, the minimum number of points of the variety whose coordinate-wise product is the given point. We classify the projective varieties for which the Hadamard rank is finite for any point. As a by-product we obtain the finiteness of the Hadamard rank with respect to varieties of tensors, such as Grassmannians, Chow varieties, varieties of reducible forms and their secant varieties, complementing previous known results on secant varieties of Segre-Veronese varieties. We prove sharp upper bounds on the maximum Hadamard rank for certain families of algebraic varieties: this is a consequence of a result on the lower semi-continuity of the Hadamard rank for curves that do not contain points with at least two zero coordinates.

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arXiv2025

Hadamard ranks of algebraic varieties

Motivated by the study of decompositions of tensors as Hadamard products (i.e., coefficient-wise products) of low-rank tensors, we introduce the notion of Hadamard rank of a given point with respect to a projective variety: if it exists, it is the smallest number of points in the variety such that the given point is equal to their Hadamard product. We prove that if the variety $X$ is not contained in a coordinate hyperplane or a binomial hypersurface, then the generic point has a finite $X$-Hadamard-rank. Although the Hadamard rank might not be well defined for special points, we prove that the general Hadamard rank with respect to secant varieties of toric varieties is finite and the maximum Hadamard rank for points with no coordinates equal to zero is at most twice the generic rank. In particular, we focus on Hadamard ranks with respect to secant varieties of toric varieties since they provide a geometric framework in which Hadamard decompositions of tensors can be interpreted. Finally, we give a lower bound to the dimension of Hadamard products of secant varieties of toric varieties: this allows us to deduce the general Hadamard rank with respect to secant varieties of several Segre-Veronese varieties.

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arXiv2025

Polynomials of small slice rank and strength

This paper investigates defining equations for secant varieties of the variety of reducible polynomials, which geometrically encode the notions of strength and slice rank of homogeneous polynomials. We present three main results. First, we reinterpret Ruppert's classical equations for reducible ternary forms in the language of representation theory and we extend them to an arbitrary number of variables. Second, we construct new determinantal equations for polynomials of small strength based on syzygies of their partial derivatives. Finally, we establish a reduction theorem for cubic forms, proving that slice rank two is determined by generic linear sections in $14$ variables; this gives one of the few explicit upper bounds for defining equations for the image of a polynomial map in the framework of noetherianity for polynomial functors.

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arXiv2025

Algebraic surfaces as Hadamard products of curves

We study projective surfaces in $\mathbb{P}^3$ which can be written as Hadamard product of two curves. We show that quadratic surfaces which are Hadamard product of two lines are smooth and tangent to all coordinate planes, and such tangency points uniquely identify the quadric. The variety of such quadratic surfaces corresponds to the Zariski closure of the space of symmetric matrices whose inverse has null diagonal. For higher-degree surfaces which are Hadamard product of a line and a curve we show that the intersection with the coordinate planes is always non-transversal.

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arXiv2025

Postulation for 2-superfat points in the plane

We study the postulation of 0-dimensional schemes given by unions of 2-superfat points in general position in the plane, i.e., the union of local schemes defined by the intersection of two distinct double lines. We prove that such schemes have good postulation, i.e., they have the expected Hilbert function. We also show the good postulation of such schemes when we add a general 3-fat point. Finally, we use these results to answer a peculiar kind of interpolation problem.

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arXiv2024

Decomposition loci of tensors

The decomposition locus of a tensor is the set of rank-one tensors appearing in a minimal tensor-rank decomposition of the tensor. For tensors lying on the tangential variety of any Segre variety, but not on the variety itself, we show that the decomposition locus consists of all rank-one tensors except the tangency point only. We also explicitly compute decomposition loci of all tensors belonging to tensor spaces with finitely many orbits with respect to the action of product of general linear groups.

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arXiv2024

Non-defectivity of Segre-Veronese varieties

We prove that Segre-Veronese varieties are never secant defective if each degree is at least three. The proof is by induction on the number of factors, degree and dimension. As a corollary, we give an almost optimal non-defectivity result for Segre-Veronese varieties with one degree equal to one and all the others at least three.

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arXiv2023

On schemes evinced by generalized additive decompositions and their regularity

We define and explicitly construct schemes evinced by generalized additive decompositions (GADs) of a given $d$-homogeneous polynomial $F$. We employ GADs to investigate the regularity of $0$-dimensional schemes apolar to $F$, focusing on those satisfying some minimality conditions. We show that irredundant schemes to $F$ need not be $d$-regular, unless they are evinced by special GADs of $F$. Instead, we prove that tangential decompositions of minimal length are always $d$-regular, as well as irredundant apolar schemes of length at most $2d+1$.

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arXiv2023

Hadamard-Hitchcock decompositions: identifiability and computation

A Hadamard-Hitchcock decomposition of a multidimensional array is a decomposition that expresses the latter as a Hadamard product of several tensor rank decompositions. Such decompositions can encode probability distributions that arise from statistical graphical models associated to complete bipartite graphs with one layer of observed random variables and one layer of hidden ones, usually called restricted Boltzmann machines. We establish generic identifiability of Hadamard-Hitchcock decompositions by exploiting the reshaped Kruskal criterion for tensor rank decompositions. A flexible algorithm leveraging existing decomposition algorithms for tensor rank decomposition is introduced for computing a Hadamard-Hitchcock decomposition. Numerical experiments illustrate its computational performance and numerical accuracy.

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arXiv2022

Identifiability for mixtures of centered Gaussians and sums of powers of quadratics

We consider the inverse problem for the polynomial map which sends an $m$-tuple of quadratic forms in $n$ variables to the sum of their $d$-th powers. This map captures the moment problem for mixtures of $m$ centered $n$-variate Gaussians. In the first non-trivial case $d = 3$, we show that for any $ n\in \mathbb N $, this map is generically one-to-one (up to permutations of $ q_1,\ldots, q_m $ and third roots of unity) in two ranges: $m\le {n\choose 2} + 1 $ for $n \leq 16$ and $ m\le {n+5 \choose 6}/{n+1 \choose 2}-{n+1 \choose 2}-1$ for $n > 16$, thus proving generic identifiability for mixtures of centered Gaussians from their (exact) moments of degree at most $ 6 $. The first result is obtained by studying the explicit geometry of the tangential contact locus of the variety of sums of cubes of quadratic forms at concrete points, while the second result is accomplished using a link between secant non-defectivity with identifiability. The latter approach generalizes also to sums of $ d $-th powers of $k$-forms for $d \geq 3$ and $k \geq 2$.

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arXiv2021

The normal map for plane curves and pathologies in positive characteristic

We study the normal map for plane projective curves, i.e., the map associating to every regular point of the curve the normal line at the point in the dual space. We first observe that the normal map is always birational and then we use this fact to show that for smooth curves of degree higher than four the normal map uniquely determines the curve. Our proof works in characteristic zero and in positive characteristic higher than the degree of the curve. We notice also that in high characteristic strange curves provide examples of different plane curves with same curve of normal lines. We will reinterpret our results also in the modern terminology of bottlenecks of algebraic curves.

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arXiv2021

Secant non-defectivity via collisions of fat points

Secant defectivity of projective varieties is classically approached via dimensions of linear systems with multiple base points in general position. The latter can be studied via degenerations. We exploit a technique that allows some of the base points to collapse together. We deduce a general result which we apply to prove a conjecture by Abo and Brambilla: for $c \geq 3$ and $d \geq 3$, the Segre-Veronese embedding of $\mathbb{P}^m\times\mathbb{P}^n$ in bidegree $(c,d)$ is non-defective.

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arXiv2021

Strength and slice rank of forms are generically equal

We prove that strength and slice rank of homogeneous polynomials of degree $d \geq 5$ over an algebraically closed field of characteristic zero coincide generically. To show this, we establish a conjecture of Catalisano, Geramita, Gimigliano, Harbourne, Migliore, Nagel and Shin concerning dimensions of secant varieties of the varieties of reducible homogeneous polynomials. These statements were already known in degrees $2\leq d\leq 7$ and $d=9$.

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arXiv2020

The set of forms with bounded strength is not closed

The strength of a homogeneous polynomial (or form) is the smallest length of an additive decomposition expressing it whose summands are reducible forms. Using polynomial functors, we show that the set of forms with bounded strength is not always Zariski-closed. More specifically, if the ground field is algebraically closed, we prove that the set of quartics with strength $\leq3$ is not Zariski-closed for a large number of variables.

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arXiv2020

Geometric conditions for strict submultiplicativity of rank and border rank

The $X$-rank of a point $p$ in projective space is the minimal number of points of an algebraic variety $X$ whose linear span contains $p$. This notion is naturally submultiplicative under tensor product. We study geometric conditions that guarantee strict submultiplicativity. We prove that in the case of points of rank two, strict submultiplicativity is entirely characterized in terms of the trisecant lines to the variety. Moreover, we focus on the case of curves: we prove that for curves embedded in an even-dimensional projective space, there are always points for which strict submultiplicativity occurs, with the only exception of rational normal curves.

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arXiv2020

On the strength of general polynomials

A slice decomposition is an expression of a homogeneous polynomial as a sum of forms with a linear factor. A strength decomposition is an expression of a homogeneous polynomial as a sum of reducible forms. The slice rank and strength of a polynomial are the minimal lengths of such decompositions, respectively. The slice rank is an upper bound for the strength and the gap between these two values can be arbitrary large. However, in line with a conjecture by Catalisano et al. on the dimensions of secant varieties of the varieties of reducible forms, we conjecture that equality holds for general forms. By using a weaker version of Fr\"oberg's Conjecture on the Hilbert series of ideals generated by general forms, we show that our conjecture holds up to degree $7$ and in degree $9$.

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